|
Mail
Magazine 24
Small business
owners criticize
Obamacare roll out
by Betsi Fores
More
business owners are upset
about the Affordable Care Act, now that the Department of Health and
Human
Services has announced that the small-business health care marketplace
exchange
will be delayed until 2015 because of “operational challenges.”
Employees
of small businesses will
still have access to insurance, but due to the delay they will be
limited to
one choice during the first year, rather than all the options promised
under
the full-fledged small-business exchange.
“We’re
disappointed they chose to
delay these particular features,” John
Arensmeyer, CEO of the Small Business Majority, a nonprofit advocacy
group,
said in a statement. “I think there’s a reason behind it, but it’s
outweighed
by tremendous benefits.”
Arensmeyer
believes people will
like Obamacare once they know what’s in it, but “[t]he problem is this
is one
of the things they like.”
The
U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued
that the announcement would have little to no effect on employers or
workers.
“We
believe that as employers
assess whether or not to offer coverage to their employees, the more
flexibility that they have in deciding how and what to offer, within
the confines
of the law, the more likely employers will continue to offer health
care
coverage,” a statement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said.
Republican
lawmakers have been
arguing that the new health care law is bad for small business even
before the
delay was announced.
“If
one of the key goals of
supporters of the health care law was to provide small business owners
with a
competitive process by which they could select from a number of
affordable
health insurance plans for their employees, then that goal is not in
sight,”
Missouri Republican Rep. Sam Graves wrote in a March 27 letter to
Marilyn
Tavenner, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Graves
is chairman of the House
Small Business Committee.
A
new survey released by Thumbtack.com,
a crowd-sourcing service website, in conjunction with the Kauffman
Foundation
found that small businesses are having trouble acquiring health
insurance.
“The
ease of obtaining health
insurance was an important factor for many businesses,” the survey
finds.
“One-third of small business owners rated obtaining and keeping health
insurance as ‘Very Difficult,’ versus only 6 percent who rated it ‘Very
Easy.’
”
“Small
businesses are top of mind
for lawmakers nationwide, but too often their needs are more a matter
of
conjecture rather than actual evidence,” said Sander Daniels,
co-founder of
Thumbtack.com.
Source:
dailycaller.com
Read this
and other articles at Mail Magazine
24
|
